Category Archives: Antierra Manifesto

(Ah, where does the time go? Late again, but here’s blog post #63 and the story is back on track.)

(from blog post #62) The petrified trembling girl dropped her staff in utter terror of striking the king and for that little mistake was promptly decapitated by her reproving lover. In a final tribute to the supremacy of malehood, the king then proceeded to have sex with the decapitated body. A fitting end to a perfect week to commemorate the enthroning of Clown Prince Jestor to king of the fair land of Elbre.

(Note: my use of the word Clown rather than Crown is deliberate)
“M. D.”

End blog post #62
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Begin blog post #63

Chapter 27 – The ‘Teaching’ Begins

It’s been over a month since I’ve heard anything from either the Cydroids or seen Dr. Echinoza. I suspect he went on one of his “R and R” trips to the south with Yoba Five, or one of the Yoba’s. In the meantime I have had six more turns into the arena. I am a new person in two very remarkable ways. One, my bionic implants work to perfection, matched as I was told, by whatever else was done to my skin and I suspect, to my brain. There is a new clarity and speed I have to actually pull back on to appear at least nominally ‘human’ to challengers, observers and watchers.

In any official arena combat, all participants are assessed on performance. Every move is observed by cameras and human recorders. Most of the observation is for legal purposes, to reveal if laws are being flouted or broken so penalties can be applied. For example, if a challenger uses a poisoned tip without having cleared it with the arena and paid the proper fee that allows use of such a poison, he will be fined, or if it causes the premature death of an expensive fighter, may cause the forfeit his own life.

Female fighters are assessed for future value in the gambling circuit and they also are watched for breaking laws.

An example of a move that will certainly get you flogged to death: approaching a challenger and suddenly releasing sand trapped in the hand into his eyes, temporarily blinding him to administer the ‘coup de grace’.

Thus are we watched and all our moves carefully recorded and gone over by statisticians. My personalized and famous killing kick had to be entered as a permissible move before I could duplicate it in an official combat. All fighting must be done using only the weapons provided. If a weapon is dropped, you cannot use your feet or hands to tackle your opponent. Unless you can regain your weapon, you die. If you use your body and succeed in overthrowing your opponent, then you have to kill him with your bare hands, or with a kick. If you do so, you will be tortured to death as a murderer.

Isn’t it interesting how the laws of any land can be twisted to fit any kind of immoral concept? Think about this. On Malefactus I have no status as a human being. I’m not even an animal, just a thing with some monetary value attached to it. Yet I can commit a crime punishable by the most violent form of punishment – physical torture. Who stops to think that through? Well, since it serves the ruling class – the males – there is no reason for them to question it and since I have no legal status to question anything they do, I cannot question it. A perfect combination. Reminds me of many laws I studied on Old Earth, especially those to do with slavery and post-slavery days on some worlds before the great die-back. Similar irrational laws governed the interaction between labour and management and whether corporations could be held accountable for crimes committed against humanity when all along they paid taxes (or made a pretense to) and received benefits under the law as did private citizens.

Here’s another thought on the same subject regarding organized sports. On any world where such gratuitous forms of violence are still indulged in, it has been my observation that organized sports of any kind require a plethora of arcane rules to remain interesting to spectators or to make any sense, especially to define one’s performance within the sport to those who participate in it. Shouldn’t that tell you something about the actual ‘value’ of such sport? Any remotely intelligent encounter with such a put-up job would be to walk away from it. But as here, in Hyrete, the opposite happens. People flock to observe these insane and immoral activities and willingly part with large sums of money to do so.

Of my six encounters now since my implants, none were even close to a challenge but I did manage to make it look as if I was working. I performed what the crowds hate the most but get the hottest about – evasive manoeuvres, drawing my opponent behind me as I back away from him, tiring him out from walking through the sand. The most difficult part for me is getting slightly wounded without incurring serious cuts or blows. I have to show I am working, but I cannot afford to get seriously hurt because the local medics may discover my implants and jeopardize the Koronese effort on Malefactus. I promised to be careful. It’s a very difficult act to perform.

Sometimes, when I let my feelings dominate for an instant I want to reach out with my bare hands, pluck the little fuck by the neck and just squeeze with those impeccably reliable bionic wrist implants and watch his eyeballs pop out.

Oh, am I shocking you? Did you think that for a moment there I was no longer human? What, and miss all the fun of living on this world? OK, so I feel sorry later. I confess to myself how wrong, how dangerous, how deleterious, how openly evil it is for me to entertain such thoughts. But in the heat of the fight, it helps me focus… until I find something better to occupy my thoughts with, or until they finally kill me.

I know there will be, there must be, an execution in my future or at the very least a killing orgy. No woman ever survives the arena. It will end here.

In between these fights I train many women. Having lowered my speech standards to theirs, and having once more bounced back from what they were sure was my certain death, thus becoming to some a kind of local hero, to others the reincarnation of their Desert Beast Goddess, several now speak to me even though they certainly fear me. I don’t mind the fear because it works for my long-term plans.

As I tap into my “other” memories I keep introducing new fighting methods, new moves, tricks, attacks that do not appear as attacks. After all these are women. Their brains work like women. They innately know how to seduce men. This can be done in many ways, not only sexually but as fighters. Even in the arena they are still women, they are not men. They are more subtle, less likely to charge mindlessly at an opponent. They are the ones who finesse the combat, who quite often call the shots as it were. With self-empowerment they can have much control over how it plays out.

But first I must make ‘her’ aware of her power as a sexual being. What stance to take when a man approaches with an erection to plunge into her. What feelings to bring forth for him to absorb. I explain that it should not be hateful, neutral or submissive. That is the one place where her female body can be activated to weaken the male without his realizing it. The way to his power is through his emotions. That is his greatest weakness. Males cannot muster up emotional shields against a woman’s sexual love advances. He can only counter with physical barriers but most of the time he finds himself powerless to do so.

“You must learn to seduce them to you not just for quick favours but to steal their will power, their male power. You must learn how to take that into yourselves. That is what I used to do on Túat Har. Any woman can steal a man’s energy through sex but few men can do the same with a woman. She basically has to let him do it to her. Here you have forgotten this and it has made you weak and fearful. Even those of you who use anger against men, you are weak. Anger is the last refuge of fear. It is your greatest weakness.

You have become slaves of men from the original shock of losing all that was familiar and natural to you. That is what the black metallic demons stole from you. What you don’t realize yet is that this ancient female power has come back for you. It is here, within you again.

“There is a story from Old Earth of a very strong man whose power was in his hair. He told no one this and he was able to fight hundreds of armed men and kill them. He could take doors like that one – I point to the massive portal of the keep’s main entrance – and carry them on his shoulders to the top of a hill. He could kill huge wild beasts with his bare hands. But he was seduced by a woman and one day he told her his secret. She cut his hair and he became weak. He was imprisoned by his enemies and they gouged out his eyes. But over time they forgot about cutting his hair and his strength returned. One day he was chained between two massive main towers that held up a stone temple like this place, and thousands of his enemies were inside celebrating. The man flexed his muscles and knew his power had come back. He pulled on the towers and collapsed the building, killing himself and all those inside. Thousands of his enemies died in one day.

“Remember this story. See this man as each one of you. As a woman on this world, realize always that the power they took away from you has come back. Yes, they have taken your freedom away and made laws so you remain slaves of men. But it need not remain that way. All you need to do is focus your mind on your female energies. Not to survive a fight against a male in the arena, that’s nothing. But to regain your freedom as women; as full human beings. That is what you once were…”

I go on like this, day after day, to one, two, sometimes more women while one of them watches for eavesdroppers (snitches) or men lurking about trying to hear what we are saying. Technically I am not supposed to talk to the women but I have demonstrated time and again, the necessity of the need to verbally explain new or revolutionary ideas. I have shown the men the advantage of allowing me these law-bending freedoms by the money they have made from my innovations in fighting techniques – not to mention the improvements on the weapons the women use.

Yes, many of the women are frightened by my words and the ideas they create in their minds. I have to keep reminding them that they are going to be killed violently regardless of what they do, or do not.

(Something a bit different, a break in the story that explains a bit more about the politics of T’Sing Tarleyn. Thankfully short!)

For more information on the early life of Chang-X, see Rise of the Supremacy – Its Military Strategy – Melkiar Invasions and Aftermath by Michele Dellman, freelance journalist and Supremacy chronicler with contributing annotations by Deles Kotmallo of Parnako. The following report is intended to help the reader understand how Elbre was ruled and what that meant for the women of that land, in case there are still doubts.

End blog post #61______________________Begin blog post #62

As found in earlier writings by chronicler of T’Sing Tarleyn history, Michele Dellman

re: King Jestor Tassard of Elbre by Michele Dellman.

King Jestor (Yes, it is pronounced ‘jester’) Tassard the One Thousandth Three Hundred and Three was the king of Elbre until the hundredth day before the arrival of An’Tierra on T’Sing Tarleyn {ref: Avatari and WindWalkers – the tales of Al’Tara by Deles Kotmalo} At that time he was deposed through the simple but expedient and definitive process we call murder, by his own son who became king Jestor Tassard the One Thousandth Three Hundred and Twenty Eight. It must be noted that the son only followed his father’s example. Jestor the “OTTHT” (not to be confused with his son, Jestor the “OTTHTE) had also murdered his own father to gain access to the throne. It’s a little family tradition that has served them well, so why should we question it?

The number, by the way, does not refer to how many “Jestors” have ridden the throne of Elbre to ignominy and infamy, but to the year of investiture of power of that particular Jestor.

“Old” king Jestor Tassard (Jestor the “OTTHT’) is an avid spectator and promoter of organized sports – of one organized sport, actually. On the day of his bloody climb aboard the throne of Elbre – a kind of coronation à la Napoleon that included the sudden, inexplicable but timely death of his father–(the inexplicability of it already explained) he held the most lavish of feasts. It became known in the Annals of the King Elbre as the greatest display of state sanctioned pleasure-killings ever organized in the kingdom city.

As per the records kept by the Arena Council of Hyrete, three hundred and eight female fighters, concubines as well as hapless birth mothers, female sex slaves and worker drones, were officially butchered in the Hyrete arena, most of them under the approving eyes of the new king, his jealous uncle and heir apparent and their respective retinues.

The event lasted from sunrise to sunset over a period of exactly six days. It is assumed by this researcher that on the seventh day, the poor king desperately needed an extended rest period. The very last victim to grace the arena and titillate the entirely male spectator crowd was the king’s own beautiful young concubine whom he personally escorted, with a complement of twelve aides, down unto the bloody sands of the arena floor where she was stripped and handed a weapon – a staff actually – with which to defend herself from, and attack to kill, her challenger whom as you have likely deduced, was none other than king Jestor himself.

The petrified trembling girl dropped her staff in utter terror of striking the king and for that little mistake was promptly decapitated by her reproving lover. In a final tribute to the supremacy of malehood, the king then proceeded to have sex with the decapitated body. A fitting end to a perfect week to commemorate the enthroning of Clown Prince Jestor to king of the fair land of Elbre.

Yet despite the gargantuan problems the race created for itself, it propagated like a veritable disease all over the planet. Yes, you can live, you can function, you can learn with incomplete data. It gets you started. That’s all that’s needed for life to move forward: a volitional push. It needs to be inseminated. Wildly. Seeds thrown to the winds of change and chance. Without plan or forethought? I still don’t know how to answer that question but the two naked lovers on their sweaty bed are answer enough.

[end blog post #60]______________________[begin blog post #61]

I know this sounds crazy, but many lives ago I already knew that “life” was a resolvable conundrum through logic simply by removing the linearity of time from any equation. Past and future become interchangeable, depending on your current needs. You can “travel” across these impossible dimensions without disturbing anyone else’s current process. Those who do so were known as the Avatari and on certain worlds they were called WindWalkers, those who walked between “heaven” and “earth” or more accurately between the worlds of spirit/mind and of physicality.

Here are some thoughts that may help clarify the conundrum for you.

You cannot exist in two different places at the same time in the same dimension, but you can exist as identical “mind entities” in any number of the same place if in parallel dimensions. Clarification: the same place, same time, but separated by the dimensional shift. The greater mind of the Avatari can choose to inhabit any of the identical minds in any of those dimensions.

Another explanation of dimensional shift: think of a dictionary as your cosmos. You want to go from, say, the word “accrue” to the word “write” but they are separated by a thousand pages in two separate volumes. You can do it like today’s commuter by reading through each word and flip through the thousand pages – travelling normal space/time, going from one volume to the other and continuing until you get to your destination.

Or you can “bore” a hole through the thousand pages of the two volumes, travelling only three or four inches to go from “accrue” to “write.” That is the Shearing drive effect. It is violent and invasive. You could also, if you knew exactly where to “re-enter” simply slip your finger from the word “accrue” (you dis-incarnate or ‘die’ at “accrue”) and gently let the book close, run your finger down the edges of the two volumes until you come to the page with the word “write” and enter there (re-incarnate) without changing anything within the books during your process. This is how the Avatari do it.

So now you’ve just crossed one thousand dimensions if each is a page, or about one hundred thousand dimensions if each is a word entry through two universes if each book is a universe. Impossible? Nothing is impossible except what is thought to be.

Another you, or several other “you’s” whom you may, or may not, be familiar with or be aware of, can exist in the past and the future without interfering with your present awareness. An adept can get information from these other “selves” and use that in the current incarnation.

Finally, it must be accepted that yes, the chicken can lay the egg from which it is hatched. That is not a riddle.

However strange this may sound to linearly-thinking brains, this is how it is. Life is not bound by any ISSA’s ability to understand events in the time/space continuum. No amount of prayer, positive statements or deniability living will change an iota in the processes on the event horizon. You have to enter in and join the dance. Dance macabre or the Tango, that is your choice, but you must be familiar with the steps within both type of dances. Life insists on that.

Duty calls, I must leave you with those thoughts for the moment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Subject: About king Jestor: an addendum

The following bit of Elbre history relating to old king Jestor Tassard, is reprinted here with permission from the titular estate managers of Michele Dellman, historian and chronicler for the Supremacy. Dellman is currently in out-space transit to Minora de Oro to record and analyze conflicting statements issuing from the bloody aftermath of the religious rebellion put down by order of Grand Admiral Chang-X. The Grand Admiral is facing a court-martial on Pax Nova where he must currently reside pending his hearing and the analysis of the “MD” report from Minora de Oro. At this point, all we really know comes from the commercial news sweep Fax-Net. Their reporters claim that millions of unarmed civilians were targeted by sub-sonic waves and killed while attending mass peaceful demonstrations against the military curtailing of their religious observances.

Minora de Oro is one of twelve worlds within the Supremacy granted and guaranteed by Galactic statute the charter of full religious freedom without any interference. Under the statute, Minora de Oro opted to be ruled by a theocracy. It is, however, no secret, that Chang-X who boasts an ancestry that goes back to Túat Har, specifically to the Communist regime dictator Mao Tse-tung, nation of China in C-20, holds nothing but the deepest contempt bordering on hatred for the observance of any religious ritual.

For more information on the early life of Chang-X, see Rise of the Supremacy – Its Military Strategy – Melkiar Invasions and Aftermath by Michele Dellman, freelance journalist and Supremacy chronicler with contributing annotations by Deles Kotmallo of Parnako. The following report is intended to help the reader understand how Elbre was ruled and what that meant for the women of that land, in case there are still doubts.

(Another late “Antierra Manifesto” blog post… better late than never ‘they’ say!)

She continues with the same angry, disillusioned tone: “Why you want to hear stupid story? They call you Desert Beast for green eyes. You come from desert, yes? This they say. But you no beast, just bigger woman, longer arm, legs, stronger. You die too, like us, like all woman. No different. Same. All same, always same. I know. It the way of it.”

[end blog post #59]______________________[begin blog post #60]

I realize in that moment I’ve just had my very first conversation with a true T’Sing Tarleynan woman. That is the mindset I have to work with. A distant tale of some possible alien intervention on this world by a race of tall “green” people with scales (Reptilians? Armour? Reflective pressure suits?) who appear to have been females. A battle for control of Malefactus that resulted in the female alien race being defeated and destroyed to the last, the invaders in the “black sky boat” who looked like men made of metal taking control and instituting a new law that decreed females would be the slaves of males.

Current facts certainly seem to bear the truth of the story. Were the black sky boat metallic men a global phenomenon, or local? Is all of this world under the same total domination by males? I need to speak to the few black female slaves about their remembered experiences, if I can get them to talk. Maybe it’s different where they come from? Could they possibly be remnants, descendants, of those aboard the black spaceship, of slaves of the black metallic men? Could these black “metallic men” have been a type of Melkiar Cyborg adapted from thousands of years lost in space?

What about this world beyond the great water as they call their ocean? What I learned of Malefactus before I incarnated here said it was a world ruled by misogyny. Fear and hatred of the female was the modus operandi. As a stack world, the effects have to be global. So, for the time being, barring miraculous intervention or change I must continue to assume there could be no place on this world where a woman could conceivably escape to and find sanctuary.

I cannot trust my Altarian research. There were too many gaps in it, too many errors. Whoever filed those reports must have had a rather shallow experience of this world. I suspect the reports were written from observation orbit, not from personal interaction with the people of the planet. How could I have been such an idiot? Why did I not locate the source material used for this information? How was it taken across the dimensional barrier? Who was the recorder and courier? How long ago? The records were old and had no tracer and no date.

Then I begin to silently chuckle to myself. I was no idiot then but I certainly am the idiot now! I knew then, as Al’Tara, where the research came from, and why it was so shallow and why I accepted it at face value without question!

I remember a time when I reveled in being a “conspiracy theorist.” I made a point of considering every major event the result of a specific conspiracy. I would immediately create a plausible scenario in my mind that explained the conspiracy. Believe all things, believe in nothing, that was my motto. Did Earthians actually land on the moon way back then in C-20 when they had no working space flight technology worth speaking of; their world poised on the edge of war based in radioactive nuclear fission technology? Having just survived two world wars in one century only twenty years apart? My answer was always, “No.” It was a put up job. A conspiracy to hide something else. A hoax like their “The War of The Worlds”* radio program that created such mindless panic.

*(The War of the Worldswas an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. Directed by Orson Welles, this was the radio program that created mass panic.)

But of course the answer was always “Yes” also. You can always have both, according to Altarian Logic. If you have one, you have the other. Dangerous walkway that is, if you are betting your life on it. I did, many times. Why? Because even if you can only see one side of a thing it is preferable to admit the logic that it must have two sides rather than stubbornly believe only in one side, claiming the other does not exist.

Take the information I found on Malefactus, from Altarian logic. Who brought that information to Altaria and put it in the holorecs? That’s simple: I did. The day I received information about stack worlds and my mind began to “see” these realities is the day I began to enter the data in Altaria’s mem-banks so the computers would begin their algorithmic searches to extract useful ‘information’ for future research by whomever would be interested in the stack world theory. That, of course, would likely be none other than I. You see, if I were to bet my life on the reality of the stack world scenario (and believe me, nobody agreed with my conclusions then, few enough even later when it became obvious there had to be “something” in it) I needed something to begin my quest.

I needed to look into the future far enough that I could create some plausible information from what I saw, index that information in a safe place, my home world of Altaria, so I could in the past that remained my future, access that information as if it came from someone else and use that “fabrication” to create my personal future living reality on Malefactus. Hence I realize now, the inexplicable “gaps” in the reports and the research. I could not place there what I could not know unless I had already lived on Malefactus, and that would not happen until I had studied the information available and formed a plan for that particular information-gathering life in the future.

It was a catch-22 situation yet basically a simple and logical approach to the problem. I was proceeding as with a conspiracy theory – from projections I mirrored back at myself to test their reliability. Since both sides are true, and as in the Möbius strip, they are but one side, I could never be wrong. I just had to accept I would have to trust my life on incomplete data, something that I was very familiar with having lived many lives on Old Earth. Everything done there was based either on incomplete and unverifiable data, or data ever condemned to shortly become useless.

Yet despite the gargantuan problems the race created for itself, it propagated like a veritable disease all over the planet. Yes, you can live, you can function, you can learn with incomplete data. It gets you started. That’s all that’s needed for life to move forward: a volitional push. It needs to be inseminated. Wildly. Seeds thrown to the winds of change and chance. Without plan or forethought? I still don’t know how to answer that question but the two naked lovers lying on their sweaty bed are answer enough.

“I want be more than what I be, Tiki. Better. In good ways, not evil ways. I tired of killing. Tired of blood and screams. Tired all over. Old now Tiki, very, very old. But cannot go yet, cannot leave, cannot die. I first find me, better me. Good woman me. I first do something good for another person. If you not understand, no matter. You remember I say this and put my words in your head. They grow there. Ideas. You say to me woman thinks is stupid. Is not stupid Tiki. I think always. Think, think. I watch men, learn. Design new weapons, train in new way for women to fight so live longer; so you live longer. I stay here, not die because I want help women be stronger, live longer. Is nothing else for me.”

[end blog post #58]______________________[begin blog post #59]

“You do this for me, not you????” She shakes her head from the novelty of the idea, that someone would deliberately sacrifice herself to help others when there is possibly an easier way out. This is a thoroughly alien concept. I must proceed carefully.

“You know love?” I ask for a reaction.

“Love!” she snorts and looks at me. “I know love. Bad thing. Men, they love me many times. They love girls, hurt them, kill them. They say it making love, it good for us. They lie. It no good. Only with you it good. Different love with you; nice, warm, good. I like love with you.”

I am thankful for the darkness and that she isn’t Cholradil because my tears are flowing freely and I cannot speak for some time. I wipe my face with the back of my arm. These little characters are so simple, remain so candid even through their nightmare lives. It’s like living in a black and white cartoon world trying to hold the little creatures together and reshaping them with a pencil and an eraser. Matter of fact; good or bad. No shades in-between. I want to drop into her space, hug her… fall in love with her… and give her my heart.

Put a check on that right now, woman. Remember she is one of millions, perhaps billions. You cannot help her unless you help all of them with equal power and abandon. Can you do that?

“Love with friend is good, yes. But when friend gone, what you do Tiki?”

“I know. I have friend before here. She good with me. She have accident, die. I know love then. It mean very sad. Much pain here.” She puts my hand to her heart.

“So even with friend, lover, love still mean pain?”

“Yes. Sometime lover taken away, or leave to go with other woman. Then you all alone and very sad. Hurt much. Angry too. Want to kill other woman. I see this here. Love, even good love, big trouble. If you go now, I hurt much. I sad and angry, I know.”

“Listen Tiki. There is love that give no hurt, no pain. Even if all gone, all lost, still no pain. Just good love. Always good love.”

She sits up then and looks into my face, notices the remaining traces of tears. Touches them and licks the salty liquid. “You hurt? I hurt you?” She is incredulous and afraid.

“No, not you. I hurt me. Inside, I be many people, in my heart, in my head. Many people from many places, stars, times. Now and long ago. I different. Not from this world Tiki. We feel things. Know things. Often cry great sadness for what hurt people everywhere.”

“Other places? Other worlds? Many people inside you? Women they say you Desert Beast. Is true this?”

“What do you know of this Desert Beast, Tiki?”

“Only what guardians say when I little. They sing sad song in my ear. Song of long ago before Man take this place. Woman free then. Have place to live, children have mother. Run free outside, run in rain, in grass, swim in river and big water. The man, he my handler when I be little. He say there be bird in sky, many many, beautiful white bird. Bird, it laugh, it very happy, like children, girls, they happy then too and laugh. He say in song this place protected by Great Desert Beast, she mother of all children of world.

“He say Desert Beast, she very tall and she have green scales over body. Green hair, green eyes. Like you have green eyes too. She fly in sky boat that make thunder and it have fire like sun to push. Very strong boat that fly even in night sky. See everything. He say other Beasts like her come with her in other boats. Talk to the people and give gifts, beautiful things, make things grow and build houses and make life happy. It is good, he say, but one day another very dark, very big sky boat come. It kill the people, take girls away. In sky there is terrible battle and Great Desert Beast boat go down into ground, into desert sand with big ball of fire. He say no one see again. Only big black boat sail off, go away far.

“The man he say the black sky boat have home like this one and all females put in cages there. Much sorrow on world after. Nothing same. No one free. Men crazy with anger and rage, kill women until black metal demons come out of sky boat to stop killing. They have fire weapons, kill many men. New law they give. Women now slaves of men. Woman speak, die. Woman hit man, die. Woman do anything displease man, die. No more children for women. Now we born from female, but not have mother, just strange people to care, teach, train.

She stops as if to ponder what she just told me. I can see her mind working, the deep frown on the pale skin of her forehead. She blurts out angrily: “It just stupid sad story, mean nothing. Old men talk, sad old cut men (she means eunuchs) telling stories. I listen then, young and stupid, think maybe I believe. Now no longer. I strong. This real. I learn, I fight, I live. I from this world. If other worlds like you say they not for me.”

She continues with the same angry, disillusioned tone: “Why you want to hear stupid story? They call you Desert Beast for green eyes. You come from desert, yes? This they say. But you no beast, just bigger woman, longer arm, legs, stronger. You die too, like us, like all woman. No different. Same. All same, always same. I know. It the way of it.”

Thus do I begin the training of a slave girl to come to a place of self-awareness and understanding. Small steps, all to be taken within the system. Step outside, even once and your chances of being flogged to death are almost one hundred percent sure. You can bend rules as long as you are willing and able to unbend them immediately, but woe to you if you break them.

[end blog post #57]______________________[begin blog post #58]

That night Tiki is angry. Not at me, she knows nothing of my intercession to get her to work kitchen duty, but at the men.

“Damn them, damn them, damn them!” she mutters in that hoarse whisper all females learn to speak in from the time they utter their first words. “I be fighter, not gorok! I train with weapon, not clean dirty bowl and sweep floor for dirty cooks. Damn them!”

A ‘gorok’ is a particular class of female worker slave who does the most menial type of kitchen work. She doesn’t cook, or even serve. She peels, grinds, husks and cleans, cleans, cleans, endlessly. Her “shifts” have no set times. She is up hours before anyone else, warming up ovens, washing utensils and cleaning counters and floors. She sleeps, when permitted, during the middle hours of the day and of the night. She is up late into the night cleaning, locked inside the kitchens with sensors ready to set off alarms if she walks outside her perimeter. A slave of slaves. There is usually a round the clock complement of eight of these goroks in our kitchens.

Because Tiki is my slave, she is allowed out of the kitchens at nightfall to spend the night with me. I had hoped otherwise, but I can redeem this time, I think. I fully enjoy her outburst. There is fire in this one. Not hate, not pride, just pure fire. She has a dream, a vision, however short: to be the best fighter ever to grace the arena. To beat my record. I can tell. Now to blend patience and humility into that fire so it can never be doused, whatever happens to the body of this woman. This one is going to develop into a true mind being, I can sense that already. I have three years to prepare her to become a hero to the women of her world. That’s sufficient when one has good material to work with. It is my turn to do my hoarse communication.

“Come Tiki,” she rolls between my legs and cuddles against my body. “You be fine. You no gorok. You be fine fighter, best fighter. Say you this every day. Pick up broom, it ‘staff’ for you. Sweep husks and peelings from floor like opponents in arena – just dust to Tiki. Strong is Tiki. Mongoose shaking cobra to death.” She nudges deeper into me, her hair tickling my throat and begins unselfconsciously sucking her thumb. I take her hand gently and pull the thumb out of her mouth and offer her my nipple instead. She takes it greedily and smiles at me. Haven’t I been here before? Beware Antierra, the snakes aren’t all outside in the coarse grasses at the edge of the desert! They be hissing from the very walls that contain you.

Wars aren’t won in a day. They take planning, patience, courage and finally just the sheer gut of the fighters to win them. Tiki does not take kindly to her new life. From kitchen duty she is shifted to cleaning the straw in the cages and then to sweeping the yards and washing the blood on the flagstones where some of the women have been “punished” for certain infractions. In this past week we were made to witness two “punishments” to the death, one of an older fighter whose owner cancelled his contract and condemned her to the next killing orgy. She was put into a private killing orgy for the trainers, a bit of fun approved by the overseer. She was led to the centre of the yard and armed with nothing but a standard training staff, was viciously set upon by six trainers until they had managed to break several ribs and one arm. When she could no longer defend herself they crushed her skull. When she died they cheered and toasted their victory. Old king Jestor would have been truly proud of these men.

The other, a trainee who had a nightmare and did not shut up in time when one of the women tried to awaken her, was flogged to death for breaking the rule of silence. We watched, listened to her screams and pleas for mercy, her dying moans. We heard the standard warning, returned to life as usual. What I would give, had I anything to give, to enter the auto-medic and be given the heart of an android, or better, a heart of stone. To not feel. To not have to endure this suffering planet.

It is the way of it… and I cannot help feeling. To cry? To curse? I glance at the bloody, pulpy mess hanging from that steel torture pole I know intimately. I wonder why it is not I who is hanging there. I imagine the life that was there, that is no more. I sat next to her yesterday at morning meal and she smiled sadly at me under her eyelashes. Well, maybe it is me there because I realize I cannot curse. If I cannot curse, then I have incarnated all of it. Each time another dies, I die two deaths: hers and mine. Malefactus is a neuro-inductor and I am attached to its probes all the time.

Under the wan light of Albaral coming through the openings in the high black stone walls Tiki and I talk in our cage as we nestle against each other enjoying the mutual warmth of our bodies. Menial labour brings anger and shame from Tiki. She is afraid they want to demote her to the rank of goronda, the general purpose female worker drone. “Damn them!” – her favourite expression towards men in general. That fire is burning dangerously bright. The wick needs trimming or the flame will smoke up the glass and obscure the vision.

I study my feelings for her as a hawk watches his prey moving unawares, feeding peacefully in the grasses below his perch. I must let her take all of me she needs yet refuse to ever let her possess any of me. I know how to do this, I know I can do it, but do I have the willpower? How does an older woman not lose herself in those black pools of sadness that pass for eyes in such children who have never experienced childhood? Creatures destined to die before they experience adulthood? What does that make them?

I try my best logic on her. “Tiki, listen me. I good fighter, yes?”

“Yes sir, you best fighter. All women say you best.”

“You trust me, Tiki?”

She replies with a hoarse grunt. “Huh?”

“Trust. Believe me. You think me true to you?”

“Oh yes! You say, I believe.”

This is extremely dangerous ground. Who in their right mind wants to be believed by someone who will put her life at stake for what you tell her? I speak slowly, pitching my voice so she can get every word, every inflection – the tone of voice to them being much more meaningful than the words used to convey it.

“Good you believe. But careful you be not believe everything I say.” She tries to speak and I put my hand on her mouth. “Wait, I finish, I explain. I know things you not know. Things good for me. Maybe not good for you. You, me, different. You listen – I say – you try. If work for you, is good for you, yes? If not work for you, is not good for you. I not know if good for you. I guess. I have vision. Like you but is my vision. You have vision to be best fighter. Good vision. I have different vision. To be best woman; to be good woman. I not good woman Tiki. Good fighter only. But man can be good fighter too, better than best woman. But man cannot be good woman. I have what called “exclusive” vision – be special.

“You woman now. What you want be? I not understand you.”

“I want be more than what I be, Tiki. Better. In good ways, not evil ways. I tired of killing. Tired of blood and screams. Tired all over. Old now Tiki, very, very old. But cannot go yet, cannot leave, cannot die. I first find me, better me. Good woman me. I first do something good for another person. If you not understand, no matter. You remember I say this and put my words in your head. They grow there. Ideas. You say to me woman thinks is stupid. Is not stupid Tiki. I think always. Think, think. I watch men, learn. Design new weapons, train in new way for women to fight so live longer; so you live longer. I stay here, not die because I want help women be stronger, live longer. Is nothing else for me.”

(Continuing with the saga, now back in the slave quarters with their usual, unchanging conundrums – or are they really unchanging, or dare I say, unchangeable?)

As already mentioned I fought and died near the end of the Melkiar invasions. I spent some years on Altaria, found some of the information on Malefactus I had hoped to locate, and re-incarnated (manifested physically) on ‘Stack World minus four’ (SW-4) of the lower set of the six dark worlds where I am now living, or to put it in a more accurate sense, existing and surviving day to day, always under the shadow of imminent death, as are all of the women in this compound.’

As the daily treatments of ice-cold water on bare flesh in pre-dawn light causes shock and exhilaration at the same time, so I put my mind through this process. I do my mantras against fear and for total detachment. Each morning I push Tiki away from my body and close my heart to her sounds and scent. She is doing everything in her child-woman power to seduce me to be mother and lover to her. I am doing everything in my power to give her all she really needs that I can give without falling into the temptation of ownership. Quasi-legally, because the men decree it so, she is my slave until they (or I) decide otherwise, or until either of us is killed. I could kill her myself and nothing much would come of it, except maybe I’d have to reimburse her owner (if she has one yet, there is no way of knowing) by taking an extra turn in the arena.

The lives of females are the cheapest commodity on Malefactus until the betting starts on a fight. A young trainee without reputation and without an owner has no value at all. She may earn some points through sexual performance but that’s shaky. Most of these men, the trainers, handlers, blacksmiths and male nurses or medics aren’t that interested in “performance.” They just take you when they feel a need and discard you, often with a slap or a kick. Romance is not their strong point.

Tiki has already been gang-raped twice during her voyage to Hyrete from her segregated crèche in a fortified village in an independent principality east of the kingdom of Elbre and south of the Union of Estáan where she was raised from an infant. The trip by foot, using male slaves as baggage carriers, took over four weeks of difficult walking through soft and shifting dunes. There were twenty-four young females when the trek began. Twenty three arrived in various degrees of exhaustion from starvation, dehydration and physical abuse at the compound in Hyrete.

The soldiers who accompanied the trek to guard against raiders decided that each night they would have a sex orgy. So each night a couple of the girls were forced to perform erotic dances for which they had not been trained and were then raped repeatedly. Some were otherwise abused. One cried out under torture and was killed after they finished with her. According to Tiki, the soldier guards were drinking heavily and mixing chakr in their brew. Under the influence of the drink, they mixed the forbidden drink using the dying girl’s blood and chakr. Then they took pieces of her body and cooked themselves a “sacred” meal. I’d heard a similar story from Tiegli so I have no reason to doubt Tiki’s account of that ghoulish march. For these girls the slave compound in the great keep of Hyrete would seem a reprieve, a place of safety… until they find out otherwise.

There is yet no such place on T’Sing Tarleyn for any woman. What, you may ask, constitutes a “safe” place for a woman, in any society, on any world? I would say from personal experience it’s a place where a woman is safe without having to rely on anyone else, especially on a male, to protect her. Ideally, wherever a woman happens to be, that is automatically her sacred, inalienable and inviolable sanctuary. In any situation, any role, a woman is approached only by her permission. Only when she clearly indicates her sanctuary is open can another walk in to “touch” her. That is how I see it now.

Yes I know Tiki desperately needs a mother figure in her life. She desperately needs love and protection, however tenuous, from an elder. I know I can provide some of it for her, but I want her to find it on her own, within herself. The only place of comfort and safety here is within one’s heart and mind. There is nothing that can help you outside of yourself. Nothing. That is, I realize belatedly, the true “lesson” of the stack worlds, regardless whether they are on the “light” or the “dark” side of the balance equation.

I brought this knowledge with me here, of course. It’s something all Altarians know, a basic natural awareness. Tiegli discovered this before she died. The “Concubines” or twins already know this. Perhaps the Cydroids also, although their minds do not function like ours so I still do not know how they perceive their reality in relation to natural humans.

Now Tiki must learn it for herself. I must allow her close to me while keeping my anti-emotion shields up when we are in contact. I begin by approaching my handlers and complaining that Tiki is too much of a distraction. She needs to be occupied. I address Delton, overseer of handlers.

“Speak sir?”

His gaze sweeps over me with a rather neutral and tired look as I stand with head bowed. “Speak gora.” It’s the ritual opening. A reminder that has lost much of its meaning over the years I’ve heard it, as do all rituals, yet deadly dangerous to take for granted. Rituals are noticed, not in being performed but in being ignored. I speak without looking at his face, focusing on a purple blotch above his left knee.

I display the most abject and humble stance I can muster, using the kind of pidgin they prefer to hear, in the hope he will even listen. He sneers – another ritual – and motions me away. I’ve been “heard” whatever comes of it. I know after so many years that they are good at listening and pretending they don’t. Females know nothing so they cannot accept any suggestions directly. They discuss any point I raise privately in their strategy and meeting sessions, taking full credit for any idea they think has merit.

Later that day Tiki, or should I say slave #1339-32-19 is taken from our cage and escorted into the kitchens. The number I quote is the last line of numbers branded on her backside. It refers to year, batch number and number in batch when she was admitted into the training compound in Hyrete. For example, year #1339 is admission to Hyrete arena compound as trainee at age 13. #32 is thirty-second batch to arrive that year. #19 is order of branding as number nineteen in batch. She has another brand line above that stating the year of birth and class of breeding. Hers is #1326-04. Born year 1326 local time; class 4 female fighter. She is permanently branded as a gladiator. Any man can thus know instantly what she is – not whom – women have no status as human beings.

Thus do I begin the training of a slave girl to come to a place of self-awareness and understanding. Small steps, all to be taken within the system. Step outside, even once and your chances of being flogged to death are almost one hundred percent sure. You can bend rules as long as you are willing and able to unbend them immediately, but woe to you if you break them.